As we saw in yesterday’s post (see Contrasting States), contrasting states can be a way for our dreams to show us both sides of an issue. Here again, Jeane is shown a contrast, between the control of a military officer and a sense of feeling free in herself. This time, however, she is also given the opportunity to go to a greater inner depth, but will she accept? (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
Jeane: My first dream I seem to be one of several people serving in the military, and it feels like we’re basically in a barracks area or something where people eat and the officers are, and there’s one officer who seems to keep an eye on everybody.
You feel like he has some way that he even investigates and knows the history about people that they don’t know anybody else knows, because he just figures that sort of thing out. I remember I’m walking once and he’s walking with me. It’s almost like we’re kind of going to go off duty, and the officer is walking with me and I’m kind of wondering in a way, why he has even almost befriended me.
It’s almost like he’s probably investigated the history of everybody else around there, but he has left my history alone – and I just find that kind of odd. It’s good in a way because it almost allows me a freer flow in my relationship with him, but I find it kind of odd. That was the first dream.
John: Basically, you’re presented with a contrast, in which the contrast is this officer in this barracks you notice pays attention, or has an attention to, everything that’s under his command. Which is an attention that limits something because it’s an indulgence, and it keeps a certain mood, or mannerism, in place.
To the degree that he has to do this, in terms of everyone that is under his command, it keeps things tight, it keeps things orderly, it keeps things under a control, and therefore it stifles something and keeps it from breaking free.
In your particular case, you’re offsetting this now by seeing what it feels like to be left free, only this is a freedom in which you let go of the pressures that are exerted. In other words, you already know what that feels like because you see that in terms of this drill sergeant’s mannerisms over everyone else.
By him not having this mannerism over you, you’re able to sort a certain free flow out for yourself because there isn’t this barrier in between. You’re actually able to relate to a deeper intention that is behind what this drill sergeant is all about.
In other words, the drill sergeant is doing what he’s doing because he feels compelled to do this for the sake of causing some sort of change to occur, but his perspective is that this change can’t occur unless he maintains a certain authoritarian or heavy handedness over those under his command.
And you know what that’s like, you know what that feels like, and you know that as long as you maintain this kind of pressure, or demeanor, in terms of how it is that you choose to sort and sift and relate, as long as you keep this as a condition bearing down, and weighing down, upon you, that you’re not going to break free and be able to truly recognize, realize, and appreciate what this drill sergeant is all about because behind what this drill sergeant is doing is something very, very meaningful.
It may be the mannerism and the veils of what is getting set up, in terms of the control and the dictums that people seem to be caught up in. Yes, that sort of thing gets in the way, but in your dream you’re recognizing and realizing that you have a whole different rapport if you let go of that kind of conditioning, and that you’re just able to, as a consequence, then appreciate the drill sergeant for who the drill sergeant really is.
Jeane: In the next dream it feels like I’ve gone with, I think it is my sister, or some feminine anyway. There’s at least one of her and somebody else who’s with us, and it feels like we’re in another country, kind of like Vietnam or something, an Asian country of some kind, and when we’re walking away from the part of the town where the people usually are, and we see another elegant woman who you even feel doesn’t like foreigners that much.
She’s with someone else from the country. We start walking down the path, but she does like the fact that I look down and I see, as we go around the corner, that we come to a really elegant village.
It’s really like this must be where they have houses and structures that are really beautiful and she likes that I can appreciate that, even though she doesn’t, on the whole, like foreigners – I don’t think.
I look at the really beautiful part, and then it feels like we’ve gone down a little bit away from that into an area that’s more like the waterfront, and we’re looking for something to eat, my sister and I and whatever guide is with us, and we come to this one table and it has like about five different dishes on it and they’re dishes that are inside a crust.
And I realize that actually once you look inside the crust, they’re all different kinds of fish. We aren’t really big fish eaters, and so we’re kind of trying to decide; we need to eat. We don’t know quite how to order here, so it looks like this big plate with all these five different kinds of fish on it is what we’re going to eat, in a way.
I kind of taste one and try to tell my sister it’s actually not that bad, but in my mind’s eye I can see what I would really kind of like would just be a big bowl of broth with vegetables in it.
John: The drill sergeant dream, first of all it’s setting you up with having to feel what it’s like to have to be under an ordered scenario, and you’re provided with a contrast, that ordered scenario is provided with a contrast of what it is like if you can appreciate and recognize and accept the drill sergeant for what he is really all about, in terms of a deeper motive and intention of his being, which has to do with your being.
So this then progresses into being able to abide in, and follow, and act according to the unfoldment of someone who is kind of meant to take you somewhere, or guide you somewhere, as you’re moving out of a particular place.
However, you’re not quite really realizing what that is. You find yourself doing it, but you still interject your ideas in terms of how it works. In other words, underneath the crust of things is a fish dish that this person brings to your attention. Fish represent consciousness and there are many, many types of fish there. You sample it, but then what do you say in the end?
Jeane: I really kind of prefer a broth with vegetables in it.
John: Yeah, in other words you want a tamer, simpler, more benign food. Fish with the protein, and the consciousness, and the quickening, and the aliveness pretty well pulls you into a depth, or beckons as a depth, that lies underneath the surface of things, underneath the crust of things.
In other words, this is the consequence of you first of all getting away from the barriers that are imposed, which create the in-between confusion like that of a drill sergeant, to those who just follow the order and suffer away.
You get beyond, or out of, this by realizing that there’s a deeper meaning behind it, and that you catch up with that and then that creates a kind of relationship. That relationship then can progress in your second dream into being able to follow something being brought forth, or brought through, or to your attention, so you have a certain fluidity of being able to follow it now that you’ve dropped the reactionariness, or the attitudes, or the idea that this is just something you have to endure.
Once you drop that so that you have something that is able to function connectively with you, that is when you’re able to be shown something, you’re able to be given something that is important for you to come even closer, at least come closer as far as this dream goes, in terms of realizing that there is much, much more.
However, for whatever particular reason, you sample it, but still have your preference for something that’s all watered down, as opposed to something this direct and to the point in terms of the depths of yourself.
Jeane: I don’t think the broth was all watered down. It was pretty colorful.
John: Well yeah, it’s colorful. That’s what life looks like. That’s what the outer enticement of things is like. Consciousness, under the crust of things, it’s not like that jumps out at you as something that, by appearance, you settle for. Other things are more intriguing, more colorful, more fascinating.
In other words, choosing this broth soup is a choice that you make for yourself after having been given a kind of flow guidance that came all the way up to a particular point, and you even sampled it, even against your heebie-jeebies that this could be something a bit much of a gulp to take in, and there are many, many levels of it, many different kinds of fish or something, and so you came up to it to a point, and then you chose something lesser. You stepped back to something lesser. See how that is?
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: Up to a Point
